Ranald MacDonald
Ranald MacDonald (
3 February,
1824 –
August 24,
1894) was the first man to teach the
English language in
Japan, including educating
Einosuke Moriyama, one of the chief interpreters to handle the negotiations between
Commodore Perry and the
Tokugawa Shogunate.
MacDonald was born in
Fort Astoria, Oregon,
USA, to
Archibald MacDonald, a
Scottish Hudson's Bay Company fur trader, and Raven (also known as Princess Sunday), a
Chinook Indian princess, daughter of Chief Comcomly, a leader of Chinook people from the
Cascade Mountains and
Cape Disappointment.
He was educated at the
Red River Academy in
Manitoba,
Canada, and secured a job as a bank clerk, following the wishes of his father. He developed a fascination with
Japan, however, as a result of the shipwreck of three Japanese sailors (among them,
Otokichi), who had washed ashore and been taken in by an Indian tribe, and a belief that the Native Americans were descendants of a people who had come from Asia.
A restless man, he soon quit his bank job and decided that he would visit Japan. Despite knowing the strict isolationist Japanese policy of the time, which meant death or imprisonment for foreigners who set foot on Japanese soil, he signed on as a sailor on the whaling ship
Plymouth in
1845.
In
1848, he convinced the captain of the
Plymouth to set him to sea on a small boat off the coast of
Hokkaido. On July 1st, he came ashore on the island of
Rishiri where he pretended he had been shipwrecked. He was caught by
Ainu people, who remitted him to the
Daimyo of
Matsumae. He was then sent to
Nagasaki, the only port allowed to conduct limited trade with the Dutch and Portuguese.
Since more and more American and British ships had been approaching Japanese waters, and nobody in Japan spoke English with any sort of fluency, fourteen men were sent to study English under him. These men were
samurai who had previously learned Dutch and had been attempting to learn English for some time from secondhand sources such as Dutch merchants who spoke a little of the language. The brightest of these men, a sort of language genius, was
Einosuke Moriyama.
MacDonald stayed in confinement in Nagasaki for 10 months, during which he also studied Japanese, before being taken aboard a passing American warship. On April 1849 in Nagasaki, MacDonald was remitted together with fifteen other shipwrecks to captain
James Glynn on the American warship
USS Preble which had been sent to rescue stranded sailors. Glynn later urged that a treaty should be signed with Japan, "if not peaceably, then by force".
Upon his return to America, MacDonald made a written declaration to
Congress, explaining that the Japanese society was well policed, and the Japanese people well behaved and of the highest standard. He continued his career as a sailor.
After travelling widely, MacDonald returned to
Lower Canada and in
1858 went to the new colony of
British Columbia and set up a packing business in the
Fraser River gold fields and later in the
Cariboo, in
1864. He also participated in an expedition that explored parts of
Vancouver Island.
Although his students had been instrumental in the negotiations to open Japan with
Commodore Perry and
Lord Elgin, he found no real recognition of his achievements. His notes of the Japanese adventure were not published until 1923, 29 years after his death. He died a poor man in Washington state in 1894, while visiting his niece. His last words were reportedly "Sayonara, my dear, sayonara..."
MacDonald rests today in the
Ranald McDonald Cemetery, Ferry County, Washington (48ｰ56'51"N, 118ｰ45'43"W) . Ranald McDonald's Grave is 18 miles northwest of Curlew Lake State Park on Mid Way Road and is a satellite of Osoyoos Lake State Park. The grave bears the following inscription:
''RANALD MacDONALD 1824-1894 :''SON OF PRINCESS RAVEN AND ARCHIBALD MacDONALD :''HIS WAS A LIFE OF ADVENTURE SAILING THE SEVEN SEAS :''WANDERING IN FAR COUNTRIES BUT RETURNING AT LAST TO REST IN HIS HOMELAND. SAYONARA-FAREWELL
ASTORIA EUROPE JAPAN THE CARIBOO AUSTRALIA FT COLVILLETo this day, there are memorials to Ranald MacDonald in Rishiri and in Nagasaki.
* Schodt, Frederik L.
Native American in the Land of the Shogun: Ranald MacDonald and the Opening of Japan. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press, 2003. ISBN 1880656779
*
An account of MacDonald's life in relation to a book about him*
Another account of Ranald MacDonald's story*
Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online*
The monument to Ranald MacDonald in Rishiri*
Ranald MacDonald in Nagasaki*
Research*
Article on MacDonald's grave*
Another article with many biographical details
